Rights group criticizes Israeli Army

Statement of Amnesty International

London, England, Oct. 9— “Since 29 September, Israeli security forces have frequently used excessive force on demonstrators when lives were not in immediate danger,” Amnesty International said today. In preliminary conclusions from Amnesty International’s delegation in Israel and the Occupied Territories, the human rights organization reiterated its condemnation of the excessive use of force by law enforcement officials.

“In many cases the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), the Israel Police and the Border Police have apparently breached their own internal regulations on the use of force, as well as international human rights standards on the use of force and firearms,” Amnesty International said.

More than 80 people, including children, nearly all of them Palestinians from the Occupied Territories and Israel, have died since clashes began on 29 September 2000 between Israeli security forces and Palestinian demonstrators all over the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, as well as in Israel. There have also been armed confrontations between the Israeli and Palestinian security forces.


A Palestinian youth sits blindfolded under
arrest and guarded by Israeli soldiers in the
West Bank city of Hebron, Oct. 10, 2000.

An Amnesty International delegation is currently in Israel and the Occupied Territories, including the areas under the jurisdiction of the Palestinian Authority, to examine policing of demonstrations in view of the loss of life. The delegation is composed of Dr. Stephen Males, a former senior police officer of the UK police with special expertise in sensitive public order policing, and Dr Elizabeth Hodgkin, a researcher from the International Secretariat of Amnesty International.

The delegates have met NGOs, doctors and over 50 witnesses to the events. They have visited sites in Ramallah, Nablus, East Jerusalem, Nazareth, Arabah and other parts of northern Israel, places where demonstrators have died after the Israeli security forces fired on demonstrators and rioters. The delegates have seen large quantities of expended and some live ammunition, rubber-coated metal bullets, CS grenades and projectiles, during visits to sites of demonstrations, as well as bullets embedded in surrounding homes and much bullet damage.

Amnesty International has compiled the following preliminary conclusions:

In many cases security forces apparently used firearms when their lives and the lives of others were not in imminent danger. However, according to internationally adopted principles, law enforcement officials shall only use firearms, if other means remain ineffective or without any promise of achieving the intended result. Firearms may be used against people, after appropriate warnings are given, only to prevent death or serious injury where less extreme means are insufficient to achieve these objectives. The standards underscore that law enforcement officials may resort to the intentional lethal use of firearms only when strictly unavoidable to protect life.

In some instances, Israeli security forces impeded wounded persons from receiving access to medical assistance. Security forces also reportedly fired on people helping to remove the wounded, in two cases killing ambulance men. The International Committee of the Red Cross has publicly appealed to all parties to protect and assist the injured and all medical personnel in their vital life-saving operations.

In instances where the security forces have not been deployed against demonstrators, riots have generally not evolved and crowds have dispersed. For example, after two days in which two Palestinians were killed in demonstrations in Um al-Fahm in Israel on October 1 and 2, on October 3 security forces did not arrive to police a demonstration and demonstrators dispersed peacefully.

Two Palestinian refugees were also reported killed in south Lebanon on 7 October when Israeli troops opened fire across the Lebanese-Israeli border on demonstrators protesting against Israel.

On 7 October, three Israeli soldiers were captured at about noon by the Lebanese armed group Hizbullah. Amnesty International calls on Hizbullah to accord the three soldiers prisoner of war status and to allow them immediate access to the International Committee of the Red Cross. Amnesty International notes that Hizbullah has publicly stated its intention to use the three Israeli soldiers to secure the release of Lebanese and other Arab prisoners held in Israel.

Amnesty International reminds Hizbullah that hostage-taking is prohibited by international law and is inconsistent with fundamental principles of international humanitarian law. Amnesty International has long called for the release of Lebanese detainees held in Israel as hostages, including Shaykh ‘Abd al-Karim al-’Ubayd and Mustafa al-Dirani.

A national commission established by the Israeli government will investigate killings which occurred in Israel. However, it is important that all killings are investigated which occurred in circumstances suggesting that they violated international law and standards. Investigations should be conducted by an independent and impartial body and by one which, in the current highly-charged political atmosphere, is perceived as such.

Amnesty International is therefore calling on the United Nations to establish urgently an independent international investigation, to include criminal justice experts known for their impartiality and integrity, to investigate all killings of civilians that took place since 29 September in Israel, the Occupied Territories and south Lebanon. “To ensure independence and impartiality of the international investigation, its members should exclude persons whose background could appear to lack impartiality,” Amnesty International said.

“The investigation should be properly resourced and include ballistic, forensic or other technical experts that may be required. It should report to the Commission on Human Rights, the General Assembly and the Security Council, and the authorities concerned should be obliged to cooperate fully with the investigation.”

“Pogroms” against Palestinians denounced

Statement of Gush Shalom

Gush Shalom (The Israeli Peace Bloc) received the following information from our Arab contacts, inhabitants of Nazareth: a mob numbering about 1,000 left the Jewish town Upper Nazareth and descended upon the neighboring Arab town of Nazareth, some holding clubs and other having firearms. They broke into the Eastern Neighborhood of Nazareth and started hitting and shooting indiscriminately at its inhabitants. The police stood aside and did not interfere, but when inhabitants of Nazareth rallied to defend themselves, the police attacked them -- first with tear gas and later with live ammunition. There are many wounded, and at least one Arab inhabitant was killed.

The attack followed an attack recently upon the Arabs who live in Upper Nazareth itself, which included an attack upon the home of Knesset Member Azmi Bishara. Then, too, the police stood aside.

What is happening in Nazareth is a pogrom, bearing all the hallmarks which were well known to Jews in Czarist Russia -- primarily the collusion between the racist attackers and the police. This is a day of shame for the state of Israel -- and it is a warning sign for the disaster in store, if the country does not rid itself of the racist scourge. Gush Shalom calls for the immediate sacking of Alik Ron, the openly racist commander of the Northern Sector Police, under whose aegis this crime had taken place. Gush Shalom also warns Prime Minister Barak to drop the mad idea of inviting arch-provocateur Ariel Sharon into his government. The mere rumor of Sharon’s imminent entry into the government has already aroused extremist groups to violence all over the country; his actual presence at the helm will be disaster which the country may not survive.

Nazareth seems not an isolated case. Reports of the same kind are coming from different places, both from the occupied territories where armed settlers are reported to be simultaneously attacking many Palestinian villages and towns as well as the Arab neighborhoods in East Jerusalem. The simultaneity and the exact similarity in tactics suggests preplanning and coordination.

Source: Gush Shalom: info@gushalom.org

Police arrest 43 after protest against World Bank president

Amsterdam, Netherlands, Oct. 3-- Police charged protesters Tuesday during a visit by the president of the World Bank to a conference on poverty and arrested 43 people for occupying a Czech Airlines office, a police spokesman said.

Riot police raided the building on the Leidseplein and arrested the protesters without using force, spokesman Klaas Wilting said. The short occupation was a display of solidarity with those arrested during the annual IMF and World Bank meetings in Prague last week.

“They are not being a nuisance any longer,” he added. Riot police patrolled the city in armored vans and on horseback and streets around the conference venue were cordoned off.

Another two activists were detained Tuesday morning for breaking through a police barricade by climbing fences and one man for throwing a bicycle at a police officer.

World Bank President James Wolfensohn was the keynote speaker at the two-day conference organized by two Amsterdam universities that began Tuesday.

“They threw garbage and smoke bombs. We were forced to carry out charges,’’ Wilting said.

No injuries were reported in the brief scuffle outside the conference venue in the Lutheran Church near Dam Square or during the Czech Airlines occupation in downtown Amsterdam.

Some 100-150 activists handed out fake money during the protest of the visit by the World Bank head. A witness said police made one charge against the demonstrators and the group quickly scattered.

Last week, riots by some of an estimated 12,000 anti-capitalist protesters disrupted a conference in Prague, Czech Republic, where Wolfensohn and delegates from 182 countries held an economic summit to discuss debt relief for poor countries.

Source: Associated Press

Bolivian uprising, road blockades continue

La Paz, Bolivia, Oct. 9— A massive wave of protests, fueled in part by peasants’ rejection of a US-sponsored coca eradication scheme, continues to shake the government of president and former dictator Hugo Banzer. In addition to the cocaleros(coca-growing peasants), the regime faces strikes and blockades by teachers, the national peasants’ union, and the Water and Life Coordinating Committee, whose members brought the government to its knees with protests over water price hikes six months ago.

Although the past week has been relatively peaceful compared to the first two weeks of the uprising, tensions remain high. An estimated 50,000 peasants continue to block highways nationwide, and protesters and troops engaged in several tense confrontations during the week. Protesters and the Banzer government remain locked in negotiations over wages and land tenure as well as the coca issue.

The Banzer regime, having heard approving signals from Washington, has now backtracked on its “non-negotiable” plan to build three US-sponsored military bases in the Chapare, the country’s main coca-producing region. Reuters reported that “unnamed US diplomats” said their concerns about monitoring coca production in the Chapare could be met without the bases, provided that Bolivia beefed up troop numbers in the region.

These comments mark a retreat in the US position. Earlier in the week, a US embassy official speaking anonymously told one local observer that if the government backed away from the bases, it could “create doubts” about Bolivia’s pledge to make the country coca-free by 2002.

Banzer’s retreat on the issue of the military bases, along with his unfulfilled threat early in the week to break the blockades using military force, suggests an increasingly isolated and desperate government. Unease in La Paz was only heightened when ten high-ranking military officers in Santa Cruz circulated a letter holding the government responsible for civilian deaths, demanding a political solution to the crisis, and calling for an overhaul of the cabinet.

But even as Banzer yielded on the military bases, Congressman Evo Morales, leader of the Six Federations of the Tropico, the cocalero’s group, remained adamant that the “zero coca option” was unacceptable. Under that portion of Banzer’s Plan Dignidad, even small plots of coca for legal, traditional uses would vanish.

“As long as the government is unwilling to discuss the coca option, we won’t have an agreement,” Morales told Reuters. After failed negotiations earlier in the week, Morales vowed “war” if agreements could not be met. His statements come amid reports that Bolivian peasants are threatening to take up arms if a solution is not reached.

Morales’ high profile may be placing him in danger. Congressmen friendly to the government are now demanding that Morales be stripped of his congressional immunity and arrested. Hard-line Minister of Government Fortun has repeatedly described Morales as a “narcotrafficker.”

Bolivian press reports during the week suggest that the government may be ready to compromise on the zero coca option, though those reports have been officially denied. According to NarcoNews.com, La Razon newspaper in La Paz has reported that the government has made a secret offer to allow 400 square meters of coca per family, but that this is only half of what the cocaleros are willing to accept. Still, granting peasants the right to harvest limited coca plots is probably the only peaceful way out for Banzer. Now, if only he can convince the US government that this is the case.

Slightly more than a year ago, drug czar Gen. Barry McCaffrey met with Banzer and told reporters “Bolivia has a lot to be proud of” with its eradication program. McCaffrey has not commented on the ongoing crisis there now.

For Sanho Tree, drug policy analyst at the Institute of Policy Studies, “If Plan Colombia is phase one of coca eradication, what we’re seeing is Bolivia in phase three — the reaction. We can expect a similar reaction in Colombia, only there everyone is already heavily armed.”

Meanwhile, according to a report in the Herald (Glasgow), raw coca prices are climbing as a result of fears that the US-Colombian adventure will cause shortages. While increases in raw coca prices will have a miniscule impact on cocaine prices in the United States and other consuming countries, coca farmers of South America stand to see their incomes double, even if no further price increases occur.

With prices having risen from about $20 for a 25-lb. bag of coca leaf to $35 in recent weeks, Plan Colombia could have the unintended consequence of sparking renewed coca cultivation across the region.

According to Oct. 7th reports from Reuters and the New York Times, teachers and national peasant unions have agreed to call off their protests, after the Banzer government acceded to most of their demands. Coca farmers, however, continue to blockade highways, after the government’s refusal to halt the forced coca eradication program.

Source: DRCNet: www.drcnet.org

Fox will ask for indigenous accords to be made into law

By Juan Manuel Venegas

Brussels, Belgium, Oct. 6— On the first of December, as soon as he assumes the Presidency of Mexico, “I will send Congress a legislative proposal accepting the San Andres’ Larra’inzar Accords,” announced Vicente Fox Quesada, the future head of Mexico, here today. Then “we will be ready to withdraw” the Army from the indigenous communities of Chiapas.

“Everything is ready for resolving the conflict,” in the southeast state, he added: “We are only waiting for the Zapatista Army to react to our proposals and for a decision to be made to dialogue with us. I assure you that there will not be one single issue that we won’t be willing to discuss, in order for the problem to be resolved to everyone’s satisfaction.”

He expressed his willingness “to negotiate directly, personally, with the Zapatista Army. I’ve already said we are willing to do everything that is necessary to resolve the problem.”

The conflict in Chiapas has been a customary issue at all the meetings Fox has been holding with the chiefs of state and of government in the countries he has visited in Europe during his trip.

Journalists of this continent have wasted no opportunities in asking the acting president-elect about his proposals for resolving the problem and for dealing with the rebels’ demands.

This time it was in Brussels, the capital of Belgium, the seat of the European Commission, where the future head of the Mexican Executive branch had to express “his willingness” to resolve the conflict through dialogue and peaceful negotiation.

As the first steps, in order to make clear his position of wanting to resolve the conflict, “respecting” the EZLN’s positions, he advised that he would be presenting the Congress a legislative proposal “accepting the San Andres Accords,” and he would be bringing about the withdrawal of military troops from the conflict zone so that they would “return to their original bases, while an honest and serious dialogue is carried out in order to deal with the demands of the indigenous population.”

Source: La Jornada

Human/pig genetic experiment exposed

Toronto, Canada, Oct. 5— Greenpeace today revealed that two biotechnology companies have conducted a genetic experiment that allowed a human/pig embryo to develop to 32 cells, and have applied for patents in the European Patent Office (EPO) to own both the process and the lifeform.

“We oppose the attempts to patent human life, just as we oppose patents on all life. It is a fundamentally degrading act,” said Greenpeace genetic engineering campaigner Michael Khoo.

In today’s revelation, a search of EPO files revealed an application by Stem Cells Sciences of Australia and Biotransplant of the United States for patents on life covering the cloning of embryos, including humans, as well as mixed species embryos from pigs and humans. In their application, the two companies revealed in detail that their scientists have already produced embryos, which were a mix of two species, a human and a pig. The resulting embryos were then grown for about a week. The companies applied for a broad patent that would cover not only pig, cow and sheep but also human embryos.

“Greenpeace recognizes that genetically manipulated organisms contained in tightly controlled and closed systems might have applications which could benefit human health, but life should never be treated as an invention of industry,” Khoo noted.

Source: Bioengineering Action Network (BAN): www.tao.ca/~ban